PORTLAND, Ore. — A dangerous Arctic blast will continue sweeping across the U.S. on Monday and linger through at least midweek, prolonging a bitter cold that set record-low temperatures in parts of the country and threatens to further disrupt daily life, including an NFL playoff game and the first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest in Iowa.

The National Weather Service said wind chills are expected to push temperatures 34 degrees below zero Celsius from the Northern Rockies to northern Kansas and into Iowa, testing the hardiness of caucus-goers willing to brave the deep chill on Monday.

“You can’t sit home,” former President Donald Trump told supporters Sunday. “If you’re sick as a dog, you say, ‘Darling, I gotta make it.’ Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.”

Arctic storms left at least four dead and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands in the Northwest, brought snow to the South and walloped the Northeast with blizzard conditions forcing the postponement of the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Buffalo Bills NFL playoff game hosted in bone-chilling Buffalo, New York.

The game was scheduled to be held Monday after being canceled Sunday.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native, posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing near-whiteout conditions.

“Conditions right now in Orchard Park, where the game would have started moments ago,” she wrote early Sunday afternoon. “No visibility and dangerously high winds.”

The Bills invited diehard fans to help dig out snow-filled Highmark Stadium, offering $20 an hour for their labor.

“We made progress shoveling, but not much at all,” said Logan Eschrich, a storm chaser who made his way to Buffalo and pitched in.

It remains to be seen if the show will go on Monday afternoon. The weather service expects heavy lake-effect snow to push into upstate New York from Lake Erie, adding to the 30.4 to 60.9 centimeters of snow already blanketing the region. Snow fell at a rate of 5 centimeters per hour.

Sub-zero wind chills will grip much of the country, plunging to –45 degrees Celsius in Montana and the Dakotas.

“It takes a matter of minutes for frostbite to set in,” the South Dakota Department of Public Safety said in a statement Sunday urging people to stay indoors.

Other parts of the country could see temperatures drop 25 to 40 degrees below normal, from the Rockies to the Ohio Valley.

As temperatures in Texas plunged, the state’s power grid operator appealed to residents to voluntarily conserve electricity Monday morning due to the cold weather causing “record breaking demand” for energy.

A deadly freeze in 2021 left millions of Texans without power but state officials this week expressed confidence about the grid’s reliability as the cold front approached.

Freezing rain is expected to pelt parts of the Southern Plains and Southern Appalachians.

Even places like Florida won’t be spared from turbulent weather, with forecasts predicting showers and thunderstorms from Monday into Tuesday.

In Oregon, more than 120,000 homes and businesses were without electricity, most of them in the Portland metro area, a day after high winds and a mix of snow and ice brought down trees and power lines.

Some 100 trees toppled over the weekend in a community just south of Portland, including one that fell on a house and killed a man. Two other people died of suspected hypothermia and a fourth died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.

“Given the extent of the damage and the high level of outage events, restoration efforts will continue into the week and customers are encouraged to plan accordingly,” Portland General Electric said in a statement. The utility said it was watching a second weather pattern that could bring high winds and freezing rain on Tuesday.

Widespread power outages affecting tens of thousands were also reported Sunday in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Nebraska, the Omaha Public Power District asked customers to conserve electricity to prevent outages.

Airports across the country were impacted. More than half of flights into and out of Buffalo Niagara International Airport were canceled. Scores of flights also were canceled or delayed at Chicago, Denver and Seattle-Tacoma airports.

 
…

your ad here

WASHINGTON — U.S. strategic interests in Central Asia boil down to stability and sovereignty, according to Washington’s top diplomat in Kazakhstan, an oil-rich republic sharing long borders with Russia and China. 

With an eye on the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine, a fellow former Soviet republic, the countries in the region have adopted a hedging strategy, maintaining deep links to Moscow while also bolstering relations with the West.

U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan Daniel Rosenblum told the Caspian Policy Center gathering on Jan. 4, that the main goal of U.S. policy for Central Asia is to ensure that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan “stand on their own, be fully sovereign and independent countries that can make their own choices about who to associate with, who to trade with, who to have relations with — without undue external pressure.” 

Rosenblum pointed to the so-called C5+1 group, including the United States and the five republics, underlining its “value in acting as a group, integrating with one another, cooperating — that makes each of them stronger individually.” 

A second focus for Washington is border security and counterterrorism, a third is boosting trade and investment, and a fourth is promoting human rights and the rule of law, he said.

Economic and political aspects

Kazakhstan is America’s top business partner in Central Asia, with $3 billion in bilateral trade in 2022 and an estimated 15% increase last year, plus $5 billion direct investment in 2023.

Despite holding regular talks on human rights, Rosenblum said Washington and Astana “do not see eye-to-eye” on the lack of meaningful political competition and the continuous arrests of critical voices.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch sites enduring concerns.

“Two years after large-scale anti-government protests rocked Kazakhstan in January 2022, few officials have been held accountable for their part in [the] disproportionate use of force against protesters, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees,” HRW stated in its annual report issued this week.

“When I arrived in November 2022, there were seven names on the list [of political prisoners], which had been going down steadily. And now there are 23, which is not a good trend,” Rosenblum said.

Akbota Karibayeva, a Ph.D. candidate at the George Washington University, agreed with Rosenblum, stressing that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s transformation package branded as the “New Kazakhstan” has not yet had major effects.

“In the ‘New Kazakhstan,’ we continue to see a familiar cycle of detaining activists for expressing their opinions and repeatedly denying registration to opposition movements. The space for dissenting voices has barely expanded, if at all,” Karibayeva told VOA. 

Asserting that Astana is complying with sanctions against Russia, Rosenblum pointed to the U.S., EU and U.K. comprised list of 45 categories of goods.

“Those 45, our experts say, are less than 2% of Kazakhstan’s exports to Russia. Even if they weren’t controlling it at all, it would not constitute more than 2%,” he said.

Rosenblum defended Kazakhstan, which has a 7,644-kilometer border with Russia.

“Since the sanctions were first imposed back in 2022, Kazakhstan’s record, I’d argue, is a good one, both in terms of their ability to prevent sanctions evasion and also making sure that they’re complying with all the sanctions when it comes to their domestic companies, relationships with Russian companies, Russian banks, and so on,” he said.

Kazakhstan last month removed the Taliban from its list of terrorist groups. 

“They gave us advance notice that they were doing this, which is in the spirit of the partnership of no surprises,” Rosenblum said. “Kazakhstan has made clear that it will not recognize the Taliban government, and that remains its position until there’s an international consensus and certain benchmarks are made. And this doesn’t change that. They’ve also made clear that they prioritize developing some level of economic relations with Afghanistan, even with the Taliban regime in charge there.”

Kazakhstan vs. Uzbekistan

Before his current assignment, Rosenblum served as ambassador to Uzbekistan, whose leadership has also promised reforms. 

“When I arrived in Tashkent [in 2019], it was already a couple of years into the reform process. … Things were slowing down,” he said.

In Rosenblum’s view, Uzbekistan’s initial steps toward change were dramatic, despite the backslidings many observe now, specifically the systemic challenges, testing President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s commitment and his regime’s willingness to transition from an ingrained authoritarian government to a democratic one. 

Kazakhstan, he said, has cycled through reform phases producing limited advances, “as opposed to what was really like a sea change, kind of a watershed in Uzbekistan, where suddenly the closed system was opened up.” 

Since 2022, following the January civil unrest that left at least 227 dead, Kazakhstan changed its constitution, held presidential and parliamentary elections that Tokayev coined as “democratic” despite the lack of opposition. He has vowed to leave office in 2029, at the end of his seven-year presidential term. 

Tokayev pledged to decentralize power and strengthen local governance, moves that Rosenblum said are still unfolding.

“The jury is still out. We have to give some time to see,” he said.

China, Russia, Iran 

One issue Washington and Astana disagree on is China’s treatment of Uyghurs, atrocities that the U.S. considers a genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet Rosenblum sees some daylight there.

“There are some Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs who are able to cross the border. They don’t necessarily receive refugee status, but they’ve essentially taken refuge in Kazakhstan, which has lived up to its international obligations of nonrefoulement,” he said, referring to the principle that asylum-seekers should not be returned to countries where they face serious threat to life or freedom. 

“They do not send people back to China,” he said. 

Kazakhstan’s trade with China recently surpassed $30 billion, which is 10 times more than its trade with the United States, which Rosenblum said he does not find surprising “since they are close neighbors.”

“Kazakhs are sort of bullish on economic relations with China. They are not as exposed or as vulnerable, arguably, as other Central Asian countries because they haven’t taken on nearly as much Chinese debt,” he said.

Kazakhstan will continue to diversify its political and economic partnerships, Rosenblum predicted, despite China’s growing influence and the country’s continuing dependence on Russia for energy.

Russian nationalists’ frequent calls to annex Kazakhstan are viewed alarmingly in Astana, Rosenblum said, but he added, “I don’t feel like there’s a sense of any imminent danger or threat to the northern border of Kazakhstan.”

As part of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, Kazakhstan recently signed a free trade deal with Iran. Rosenblum said Astana consults with Washington on this issue as well. 

“The Kazakh government by now has learned what’s sanctionable and what isn’t,” he said.

Kazakhstan, a regional leader?

While Rosenblum praised Kazakhstan as a “consistent pusher” for regional unity and connectivity, Karibayeva argued that to become a real catalyst for change in Central Asia, her country must lead by example.

“Symbolic gestures and high-level engagements among Central Asian countries and with the United States are important signals of commitment. But it is now essential to progress beyond discussions and focus on implementation at every level of cooperation,” she told VOA.

 
…

your ad here

New York — Business Insider’s top executive and parent company said Sunday they were satisfied with the fairness and accuracy of stories that made plagiarism accusations against a former MIT professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” said a spokesman for Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication.

The company had said it would look into the stories about Neri Oxman, a prominent designer, following complaints by her husband, Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and CEO of the Pershing Square investment firm. He publicly campaigned against Gay, who resigned earlier this month following criticism of her answers at a congressional hearing on antisemitism and charges that her academic writing contained examples of improperly credited work.

With its stories, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic dishonesty is widespread, even among the nation’s most prominent scholars.

Ackman’s response, and the pressure that a well-connected person placed on the corporate owners of a journalism outlet, raised questions about the outlet’s independence.

Business Insider and Axel Springer’s “liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “This is what they consider fair, accurate and well-documented reporting with appropriate timing. Incredible.”

Business Insider’s first article, on Jan. 4, noted that Ackman had seized on revelations about Gay’s work to back his efforts against her — but that the organization’s journalists “found a similar pattern of plagiarism” by Oxman. A second piece, published the next day, said Oxman had stolen sentences and paragraphs from Wikipedia, fellow scholars and technical documents in a 2010 doctoral dissertation at M.I.T.

Ackman complained that it was a low blow to attack someone’s family in such a manner and said Business Insider reporters gave him less than two hours to respond to the accusations. He suggested an editor there was an anti-Zionist. Oxman was born in Israel.

The business leader reached out in protest to board members at both Business Insider and Axel Springer. That led to Axel Springer telling The New York Times that questions had been raised about the motivation behind the articles and the reporting process, and the company promised to conduct a review.

On Sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng issued a statement saying “there was no unfair bias or personal, political and/or religious motivation in pursuit of the story.”

Peng said the stories were newsworthy and that Oxman, with a public profile as a prominent intellectual, was fair game as a subject. The stories were “accurate and the facts well-documented,” Peng said.

“Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng wrote.

Business Insider would not say who conducted the review of its work.

Ackman said his wife admitted to four missing quotation marks and one missed footnote in a 330-page dissertation. He said the articles could have “literally killed” his wife if not for the support of her family and friends.

“She has suffered severe emotional harm,” he wrote on X, “and as an introvert, it has been very, very difficult for her to make it through each day.”

For her part, Gay wrote in the Times that those who campaigned to have her ousted “often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned arguments.” Harvard’s first Black president said she was the subject of death threats and had “been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”

There was no immediate comment Sunday from Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider’s global editor in chief. In a memo to his staff last weekend that was reported by The Washington Post, Carlson said he made the call to publish both of the stories and that he knew the process of preparing them was sound.
…

your ad here

O’FALLON, Mo. — Icy winter weather blanketed the U.S. on Saturday as a wave of Arctic storms threatened to break low-temperature records in the heartland, spread cold and snow from coast to coast and cast a chill over everything from football playoffs to presidential campaigns.

As the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend began, the weather forecast was a crazy quilt of color-coded advisories, from an ice storm warning in Oregon to a blizzard warning in the northern Plains to high wind warnings in New Mexico.

“It’s, overall, been a terrible, terrible winter. And it came out of nowhere — two days,” Dan Abinana said as he surveyed a snowy Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to the state from Tanzania as a child years ago, but said “you never get used to the snow.”

The harsh weather in Oregon played a role in three deaths.

In Portland, medical examiners were investigating a hypothermia death as freezing rain and heavy snow fell in a city more accustomed to mild winter rains, and hundreds of people took shelter overnight at warming centers.

Portland Fire and Rescue also reported the death of a woman in her early 30s on Saturday afternoon. An RV caught fire when a small group of people used an open flame stove to keep warm inside and a tree fell on the vehicle, causing the fire to spread. Three other people escaped, including one with minor injuries, but the woman was trapped inside, the fire department said. 

Authorities in Lake Oswego, Oregon, said a large tree fell on a home during high winds Saturday, killing an older man on the second floor.  

Weather-related deaths already were reported earlier in the week in California, Idaho, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced a state of emergency, citing “very dangerous conditions.” Up to 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow fell in some areas over the past week, and wind chills were well below zero.

“This event is not going away tonight. It’s not going away tomorrow,” Pillen said at a news conference “It’s going to take a number of days.”

About 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometers) of Nebraska highways were closed. State police assisted more than 400 stranded motorists, said Col. John A. Bolduc, head of the Nebraska State Patrol.

In Iowa, cars were stuck for five hours in blowing snow on Interstate 80 after semitrailers jackknifed in slippery conditions. State troopers had handled 86 crashes and 535 motorist-assist calls since Friday, State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla said.

Road crews were “working the snow-blowers like crazy,” Dinkla said, but high winds were blowing snow right back onto roadways.

Governors from New York to Louisiana warned residents to be prepared for worrisome weather.

Parts of Montana fell below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) Saturday morning, and the National Weather Service said similar temperatures were expected as far as northern Kansas, with minus 50 F (minus 46 C) possible in the Dakotas. In St. Louis, the National Weather Service warned of rare and “life-threatening” cold.

“We’ve had, now, multiple back-to-back storms” parading across the country, weather service meteorologist Zach Taylor said. That typically happens at least a couple of times in the U.S. winter.

Still, to Eboni Jones of Des Moines, it felt unusual for “how much we’re getting all within one week.”

“It’s pretty crazy out,” Jones said while shoveling snow.

Grant Rampton, 25, also of Des Moines, braved a wind chill of minus 20 F (minus 29 C) to go sledding with friends at a golf course, fighting off the cold by wearing layers of clothing and insulated socks and keeping in constant movement.

“It’s a great state to be in,” said Rampton, a lifelong Iowan. “There’s not as much to do, in winter especially, but you can make your own fun, like out here, sledding with your friends.”

The temperature in parts of Iowa could dip as low as minus 14 F (minus 26 C) on Monday, when the state’s caucuses kick off the presidential primary season. And forecasters said it would be Wednesday before below-zero windchills go away.

Republicans Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump all canceled campaign events because of the storm.

Electricity was out Saturday afternoon in hundreds of thousands of households and businesses, mainly in Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin, according to poweroutage.us.

In Yankton, South Dakota, the temperature was minus 15 F (minus 26 C) in the evening. Police there said plows were “freezing and breaking,” so they would not operate until conditions improve. The Minnehaha County Highway Department also pulled its plows “due to low visibility and extreme cold temps.”

In other places, if the problem wasn’t snow and wind, it was water: Record high tides hit the Northeast, flooding some homes in Maine and New Hampshire.

The coastal Northeast was pounded by 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) of rain in the morning, and a storm surge amplified what was already the month’s highest tide, National Weather Service meteorologist Michael Cempa said. In Portland, Maine, a gauge recorded a 14.57-foot (4.4-meter) difference between high and average low tide, topping a prior record of 14.17 feet (4.3 meters) set in 1978.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned of a “dangerous storm” as she announced that the Buffalo Bills-Pittsburgh Steelers NFL playoff game was postponed from Sunday to Monday. Residents of the county that includes Buffalo were told to stay off the roads starting at 9 p.m. Saturday, with the forecast calling for 1 to 2 feet (0.3 to 0.6 meters) or more of snow and winds gusting as high as 65 mph (105 kph). 

Kansas City, Missouri, hosted a frigid playoff game Saturday night between the Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins. It was minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Celsius) at kickoff, easily setting a record for the coldest game at Arrowhead Stadium.

Still, hundreds of fans lined up hours beforehand outside the Arrowhead Stadium parking lots, some with ski goggles, heated socks and other winter gear they bought for the game.

Chiefs season ticket holder Keaton Schlatter and his friends had considered trying to sell their seats, as many other fans did.

“But we decided that it’s all part of the experience, and we didn’t want to miss it,” said Schlatter, of West Des Moines, Iowa.

In Oregon, Robert Banks, who has been homeless for several years, stood outside his blue tent along a Portland street in the afternoon, wearing one glove as sleet pelted him. He said he wanted to secure his belongings before making his way to a shelter.

“I lived in Alaska for a number of years,” he said. “The wind and the wet cold is different from dry tundra cold … oh, it is bone-chilling.”

The snow was welcome in at least one place.

Philip Spitzley of Lake Odessa, Michigan, woke up Friday to 95 small snowmen in his front yard to celebrate his 95th birthday. Fifteen family members and a neighbor collaborated on the snow-packing job, which took about 90 minutes.

“I was quite surprised,” Spitzley said. “I sat right here watching my TV and didn’t know they were out there. Then I saw flashlights.” 

The display has turned into a spectacle as motorists slow down for a look. And with days of cold weather ahead, “they’ll be there awhile,” Spitzley said. 
…

your ad here

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — The Tyrannosaurus rex seemingly came out of nowhere tens of millions of years ago, with its monstrous teeth and powerful jaws dominating the end of the age of the dinosaurs. 

How it came to be is among the many mysteries that paleontologists have long tried to solve. Researchers from several universities and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science say they now have one more piece of the puzzle. 

On Thursday, they unveiled fossil evidence and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Their study identifies a new subspecies of tyrannosaur thought to be an older and more primitive relative of the well-known T. rex. 

There were oohs and ahs as the massive jaw bone and pointy teeth were revealed to a group of schoolchildren. Pieces of the fragile specimen were first found in the 1980s by boaters on the shore of New Mexico’s largest reservoir. 

The identification of the new subspecies came through a meticulous reexamination of the jaw and other pieces of the skull that were collected over years at the site. The team analyzed the specimen bone by bone, noting differences in numerous features compared with those synonymous with T. rex. 

“Science is a process. With each new discovery, it forces us to go back and test and challenge what we thought we knew, and that’s the core story of this project,” said Anthony Fiorillo, a co-author of the study and the executive director of the museum. 

The differences between T. rex and Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis are subtle. But that’s typically the case in closely related species, said Nick Longrich, a co-author from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. 

“Evolution slowly causes mutations to build up over millions of years, causing species to look subtly different over time,” he said. 

The analysis suggests the new subspecies Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis was a side-branch in the species’ evolution, rather than a direct ancestor of T. rex. 

The researchers determined it predated T. rex by up to 7 million years, showing that tyrannosaurs were in North America long before paleontologists previously thought.

T. rex has a reputation as a fierce predator. It measured up to 40 feet (12 meters) long and 12 feet (3.6 meters) high. Study co-author Sebastian Dalman and the other researchers say T. mcraeensis was roughly the same size and also ate meat. 

Thomas Richard Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, said the tyrannosaur fossil from New Mexico has been known for a while but its significance was not clear. 

One interesting aspect of the research is that it appears T. rex’s closest relatives were from southern North America, with the exception of Mongolian Tarbosaurus and Chinese Zhuchengtyrannus, Holtz said. That leaves the question of whether these Asian dinosaurs were immigrants from North America or if the new subspecies and other large tyrannosaurs were immigrants from Asia. 

“One great hindrance to solving this question is that we don’t have good fossil sites of the right environments in Asia older than Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus, so we can’t see if their ancestors were present there or not,” Holtz said. 

He and the researchers who analyzed the specimen agree that more fossils from the Hall Lake Formation in southern New Mexico could help answer further questions.
…

your ad here

…

your ad here

…

your ad here

WASHINGTON — The United States launched a follow-up strike against a Houthi target in Yemen early Saturday, after officials said they were not satisfied with the damage inflicted during the initial round of airstrikes late Thursday.

U.S. Central Command said it launched the additional strike from the USS Carney, a guided missile destroyer, firing multiple Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles to take out a radar site that it said presented a continuing threat to maritime traffic.

The strike comes a little more than a day after the U.S. and British militaries carried out dozens of strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen, in retaliation for weeks of Houthi attacks that have disrupted shipping and damaged vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Houthi militants did launch an anti-ship ballistic missile early Friday, U.S. military officials confirmed, though it did not hit any ships.

U.S. and British officials expressed optimism Friday that the initial strikes late Thursday, which are now being described as two waves of strikes, were successful.

A U.S. defense official told VOA on Friday that the initial assessment indicates the first wave of precision strikes late Thursday degraded the ability of the Houthis to launch further attacks.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details, said a more comprehensive assessment of the strikes was still underway. But the sentiment echoed other early assessments by senior U.S. officials, who have described the damage to Houthi capabilities as “significant.” 

“We feel very confident about where our munitions struck,” Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters Friday. “But we don’t know at this point the complete battle damage assessment.”

U.S. Central Command late Thursday said that U.S. fighter jets, naval vessels and submarines hit more than 60 targets at 16 locations across Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, including command and control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, and production facilities.

But Sims said Friday, the U.S. and Britain launched a second wave of strikes against another 12 locations 30 minutes to an hour after the initial strikes were carried out.

The additional sites, each with multiple targets, “had been identified as possessing articles that could be potentially used against forces, maritime and air,” he said, noting the strikes were taken in self-defense.

U.S. officials said, in all, more than 150 precision guided munitions were aimed at Houthi targets, including Tomahawk missiles.

At least three U.S. guided missile cruisers and destroyers (the USS Gravely, the USS Philippine Sea, and the USS Mason) took part in the strikes along with an Ohio-class submarine, fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, and U.S. Air Force jets.

A separate statement Friday from the British Defense Ministry said four of its Typhoon fighter jets, accompanied by an air refueling tanker, used laser-guided bombs to hit two locations: a drone launch site in Bani, in northwestern Yemen, and an airfield in Abbs, used to launch cruise missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea.

“Early indications are that the Houthis’ ability to threaten merchant shipping has taken a blow,” the ministry said.

Despite the optimistic strike assessments, U.S. officials have said they believe the Houthis are likely to retaliate.

“My guess is that the Houthis are trying to figure things out on the ground and trying to determine what capabilities still exist for them,” Sims said. “Their rhetoric has been pretty strong and pretty high, and I would expect that they will attempt some sort of retaliation.”

“I would hope they wouldn’t,” he added, describing the Houthi efforts as “generally fruitless.”

But the White House repeated its warning Friday that the Houthis would face additional consequences if their attacks persist.

“We will make sure that we respond to the Houthis if they continue this outrageous behavior, along with our allies,” President Joe Biden said in response to reporters’ questions during a stop at a coffee shop in Pennsylvania on Friday.

Also Friday, the U.S. unveiled new sanctions aimed at commodity shipments that have been funding the Houthis and their Iranian backers.

U.S. Treasury Department officials imposed sanctions on a Hong-Kong-based company and another company in the United Arab Emirates, both of which have been working with Sa’id al-Jamal, a financier who has been supporting both the Houthis and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.

“We will take all available measures to stop the destabilizing activities of the Houthis and their threats to global commerce,” Treasury Undersecretary Brian Nelson said in a statement.

Since mid-November, the Houthis have launched at least 28 attacks, affecting citizens, cargo and vessels from more than 50 countries, according to the U.S.

U.S. officials have said that Biden made the decision to launch Thursday’s strikes following a Houthi attack on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden on Tuesday that involved 18 one-way attack drones, two cruise missiles and one ballistic missile.

U.S. combat jets, along with U.S. and British military vessels, responded by shooting down the drones and missiles, averting any damage to ships or injuries to their crews in the area.

Last week, the United States and 12 allies issued a statement warning the Houthis of unspecified consequences if their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea continued.

The statement followed the launch in mid-December of Operation Prosperity Guardian by the United States, Britain and nearly 20 other countries to protect ships from Houthi attacks.

Since the launch of Prosperity Guardian, at least 1,500 vessels have passed safely through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

The U.N. Security Council adopted its own resolution Wednesday, calling on the Houthis to stop the attacks immediately.

But Russia, which abstained in the vote, called for an emergency meeting of the council Friday evening to discuss the strikes. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called the U.S.-British strikes a “blatant armed aggression against another country.” He argued that the strikes did not meet the conditions for self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.

“Article 51 does not apply to the situation with commercial shipping,” Nebenzia said. “The right to self-defense cannot be exercised in order to ensure the freedom of shipping. Our American colleagues know this fact very well.”

In a statement Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea area are “not acceptable” and endanger the safety and security of global supply chains and have a negative impact on the economic and humanitarian situation worldwide. He urged the Houthis to immediately cease their attacks and called for all parties to respect the Security Council resolution in its entirety.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Council that the strikes were consistent with international law and Article 51. She said Washington does not take such strikes lightly and they were only carried out “after non-military options proved inadequate to address the threat.”

VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara and U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.   
…

your ad here

…

your ad here

washington — House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted Friday he is sticking with the bipartisan spending deal he struck with the other congressional leaders, but he offered no clear path for overcoming hard-right opposition within his own party to prevent a partial government shutdown next week.

Johnson emerged from days of testy meetings behind closed doors at the Capitol to read a terse statement. Just months on the job, the new speaker is trying to set the record straight that he will not renege on the budget deal he made earlier this week. But in his first big test as the new leader, he has yet to show how he will quell the revolt from his right flank that ousted his predecessor.

“Our top-line agreement remains,” Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said, referring to the budget accord reached January 7.

“We are getting our next steps together, and we are working toward a robust appropriations process,” he said. “So, stay tuned for all that.”

It’s the same intractable political dilemma that led a core group of right-flank Republicans to boot Representative Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s office last year as they revolted against the deal he struck with the other congressional leaders and President Joe Biden signed into law.

Lawmakers during the first work week of the new year are furious that, after spending much of 2023 watching hard-right Republicans fight the leaders, they are quickly careening toward another crisis with just a week to go before the January 19 deadline to fund parts of the government or risk a shutdown yet again.

As some Republicans from the Freedom Caucus again raise the threat of a motion to oust the speaker over the deal, other Republicans are furious they are starting 2024 with the same problems of governing.

In the morning before Johnson made his statement, he met with about two dozen House Republicans, more of them centrist-leaning voices, urging him not to go back on his word and stick with the deal.

The centrists assured Johnson they have his back.

“I just can’t imagine the House wants to relive the madness,” said Representative French Hill of Arkansas, who had helped McCarthy negotiate the initial agreement with Biden and the other leaders.

“This concept of trying to break a deal that was negotiated, it’s a foreign concept,” said Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida. “What you would be asking is for the speaker to basically break his word and lie. That’s just something you can’t ask him to do.”

Since Congress resumed from the holiday break, Johnson has been holed up in his office at the Capitol receiving a steady stream of Republican lawmakers trying to force his hand.

Just two days into the workweek, the House hit a crisis Wednesday when hard-right Republicans forced the chamber to a standstill. They voted against a routine procedural rules package as a way to demand the speaker’s attention.

They are pressing Johnson to refuse the deal, with its $1.66 trillion in spending for the year, and to instead consider a temporary measure that would keep the government open but force 1% across-the-board cuts that are required to kick in if the broader package falls apart.

The hard-right flank is also insisting that new immigration policies be included, which they say would stop the record flow of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Republican Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona said in floor remarks that Republicans should “shut the government down until you shut the border down.”

But by Friday it was more centrist lawmakers making their way to Johnson’s office, many of them who serve on the appropriations panels writing the spending bills, urging him to hold firm to the deal he struck.

Some have suggested that Johnson should consider trying to pass a temporary measure that would fund the government for several more weeks, into March.

Biden signed the spending framework into law as part of a deal he struck last spring with McCarthy. It was agreed to by the other congressional leaders from both parties and approved by the House and Senate as part of an effort to raise the nation’s debt limit to avert a federal default.

In the time since, congressional leaders have been working to devise the top-line spending numbers. McCarthy could never deliver on the final numbers before he was ousted after reaching across the aisle to pass a temporary measure in September and prevent a shutdown at that time.

Johnson and the other leaders, Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, picked up where they left off and reached a top-line deal at the start of the year that the speaker is now trying to have approved.
…

your ad here

In its annual report published Thursday, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of war crimes and said many governments were expressing “selective outrage” over atrocities committed in the conflict in Gaza. Henry Ridgwell reports
…

your ad here

washington — U.S. officials overseeing assistance to Afghanistan told U.S. lawmakers Thursday that aid is rigorously monitored to prevent financial benefits from reaching the Taliban.

“We remain extremely vigilant against attempts to divert and interfere with assistance delivery. USAID takes its duty as a steward of U.S. taxpayer dollars extremely seriously, and we hold implementing partners to the highest standards,” said Michael Schiffer, assistant administrator, Bureau for Asia, U.S. Agency for International Development.

Assurances from the U.S. State Department and USAID came after the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a January 8 letter that there were still unanswered questions about $3.5 billion in funds controlled by the Switzerland-based Afghan Fund.

SIGAR told Congress that more than a year after the Afghan Fund’s creation it had not made any disbursements for its intended purpose of benefiting the Afghan people.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “an estimated 23.7 million people — more than half of Afghanistan’s population — will require humanitarian assistance to survive in 2024.”

The Taliban took back control of Afghanistan in August 2021 following the chaotic U.S. evacuation of Kabul that ended the 20-year conflict. The United States has provided more than $2 billion in aid since that takeover.

“The Taliban is benefiting more than ever from U.S. taxpayer dollars,” said Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “They steal from NGOs to enrich their fighters and to solidify their power.”

McCaul said the Taliban demand payoffs from NGOs, create fake NGOs to receive aid money and embed Taliban officials within U.N. agencies.

An October 2023 SIGAR report found evidence of that infiltration, leading to lawmaker concerns about potential corruption in the Afghan Fund.

McCaul said Thursday that SIGAR has 30 outstanding requests awaiting an answer from the State Department regarding the disbursement of aid in Afghanistan.

Thomas West, special representative for Afghanistan and deputy assistant secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told the House panel that the State Department has spent more than 13,000 hours cooperating with SIGAR on its requests about aid oversight.
…

your ad here